Kennedys and King Test host626

Tag: MAUREEN CALLAHAN

  • Maureen Callahan Goes over the Edge–Along with Megyn Kelly Pt. 2

    Maureen Callahan Goes over the Edge–Along with Megyn Kelly Pt. 2

    There was no way that someone like Maureen Callahan was not going to use Mimi Alford. And Callahan used her in two different sections of her book. Even though she presents a myriad of problems.  Greg Parker did a nice job outlining the origin problems with Robert Dallek’s surfacing of the story. (Article by Parker at reopenkennedy case.net of 2/7/2012) As he points out there was no ‘intern” program being run out the White House by press officer Barbara Gamarekian–who was Dallek’s original source for Alford. This was likely a term Dallek wanted to use to make a parallel with Monica Lewinsky. Secondly, at first no one recalled Alford, even when Dallek first brought her name up. As Parker notes, after Dallek’s book came out, reporters pieced together a story of her being at the Bermuda summit with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. (Time magazine, May 26, 2003) How do you piece together something from 1961 in 2003? Especially when no one recalled her at first?

    Plus the Alford claim is she did not start at the White House until 1962. (NY Times 2/11/62)

    But the story is actually worse than that. And Callahan knows it but she just discounts it. Mimi claimed she was in the White House during the Missile Crisis. (Callahan, p. 289) And also that JFK sent his wife and kids away so he could be with her. (Sunday Times, 2/12/12) 

    As biographer Randy Taraborrelli shows, this is more malarkey. Jackie Kennedy refused Secret Service agent Clint Hill’s request for her to go to a bomb shelter in the East Wing. (Taraborrelli, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, p. 100) She refused to relocate elsewhere. The reason she gave was that average American citizens did not have that opportunity so she should not either. During the entire two week episode, she was gone for only two days.  And this coincided to times when her husband was also gone.  And when this happened, it was JFK who called her and said he was returning, so she should also come back. (ibid, pp. 101-02) Jackie clearly stated that if she was going to perish in an atomic war she would do so with her husband and kids. (ibid, p. 104)

    But the most jocular part of the Alford story is her statement that not only was she there during the Missile Crisis, but Kennedy told her “I’d rather my children be red than dead.” (The Guardian, 2/10/12)

    How can any informed person keep a straight face while reading such rubbish? Kennedy went on national TV and warned the Russians that any missile launched from Cuba would be considered an attack from Russia.  He considered the secret installation of a first strike force in Cuba to be a Russian ploy in order for Moscow to make a play for Berlin.  And that is where Kennedy had drawn a line in the sand. And any historian can tell that from the preceding year’s Berlin Crisis. Furthering that line in the sand was OPLAN 316, a huge joint Pentagon operation that was designed for land, sea and air operations against Cuba. Thank heaven that did not occur since the Russians had given Castro tactical nuclear weapons with which to incinerate any incoming invasion.

    Kennedy’s open determination to go to the brink was part of his masterful diplomacy that saved us from incineration. It has always been part of the conservative agenda to somehow demean Kennedy’s stellar achievement.

    II

    Callahan’s approach was not going to spare Ted Kennedy.  Even though many Republicans called him the most effective Democratic senator of the era.  Who can forget his attack on Judge Robert Bork? Kennedy’s call in the night was a warning against that The Federalist Society was hijacking our judiciary system in broad daylight, something that Donald Trump completed, with loathsome results.  Equally memorable was his eloquent, unforgettable concession speech at the 1980 Democratic Convention, which seemed to sum up the whole reason d’etre of the party.

    Well Callahan can. And she  does her usual rigging of the schema. She discounts credible and objective biographies of Kennedy by accomplished biographers like Neal Gabler and John Farrell. Instead she references and uses a book about him by a guy named Richard E. Burke. (p. 361) I strongly recommend the reader go to Amazon and compare the number of books and biographies published by Gabler and Farrell and the number by Burke. You will see many by the first two, I could only find one by the last: the Kennedy book.  With likely good reason.

    As reviewer Theo Lippman, who wrote a book about Kennedy,  said, he got all of Teddy’s staff to talk to him except Burke.  Lippmann learned that Burke was a gofer.  And he made up stuff like Kennedy sharing cocaine with his children. But what some journalists dug up was that what caused Burke to write the book was a combination of personal bankruptcy, drug dependence and serious emotional problems. (Greensboro News and Record, 10/24/92). It was a sizeable bankruptcy, $875, 230.00.  According to another report , numerous people’s names in the book were changed, and composites were used. (Sharon Isaak, Entertainment Weekly, 10/30/92)

    Is this the way to write biography? Well, I guess its okay for Callahan.

    In addition to Burke, she also says that the late Leo Damore’s book about the Chappaquiddick tragedy is the best on the subject. (Callahan, p. 348)  Yet Senatorial Privilege was rejected by its original publisher, Random House. Even though they had given Damore  a $150,000 advance. This ended up in a court action since Random House wanted their money back. Damore said this was all caused by pressure from the Kennedy family. The judge in the case stated that that there were no extenuating circumstances: that is, the Kennedy family exerted no pressure. He also said the publisher had acted in good faith rejecting the manuscript. Another problem was that Damore was accused of practicing “checkbook journalism” paying off a witness, i.e. Bernie Flynn. (Read Lisa Pease’s discussion of Damore.)

    So what happened to Damore’s book after this? Rightwing literary agent Lucianna Goldberg came to the rescue.  She found him a home at the conservative house Regnery.   One of the most bizarre aspects of Damore’s book is that he suggests that the drowning victim, Mary Jo Kopechne, survived for hours after the crash due to an air pocket in the car. And she appears to borrow this. (Callahan, p. 106) This is utter nonsense. Because three of the windows in the car were open when the car hit the water. (Chappaquiddick: The Real Story,  by James Lange and Katherine DeWitt, p.41) Also, Damore all but dismissed the effect of hypothermia in this case.

    Another problem with Damore is his use of Joe Gargan, a Kennedy cousin, as a witness.  Gargan had a falling out with Ted Kennedy in the early eighties.  As Pease notes, even the NY Times took issue with this: “What undermines Mr. Damore’s account is that these accusations, while seeming to come from a firsthand source, are not direct quotes from Mr. Gargan, nor are they attributed directly to the 1983 interviews.”  The accusation is that Kennedy wanted Gargan to say that it was him driving the car.  The problem is that there is no evidence in the original record that Kennedy ever said or even implied such a thing. (op. cit. Pease)

    But the worst part of Damore’s book was its title.  Because as James Lange and Katherine DeWitt point out, Ted Kennedy did not get any special treatment as a result of this case. Lange was a personal injury lawyer, and he concluded that Kennedy got what any other person who could afford a good lawyer would. He had to pay a combined indemnity to the Kopechne family of in what is today well over a million dollars, he got his license suspended, and a two month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident.  (Lange, p. 151, pp. 160-62)

    Callahan, I think borrowing from the cheapjack film that was made of this tragic episode, tries to say that Ted Kennedy really did not need the neck brace he was wearing . (Callahan, p. 121) Again, this is malarkey. Both doctors who examined Kennedy told him to wear that brace due to cervical strain. That would be Dr. Watt, a trauma specialist, and Dr. Broughan, a neurosurgeon. (Lange, p. 51, p. 120) I think they know something more about such injuries than Callahan.

    In fact they both concluded that, among other injuries, Kennedy suffered a concussion so severe that he had both retrograde amnesia and post traumatic amnesia. (ibid, pp. 120-21) In fact Brougham wanted to do a lumbar puncture, popularly called a spinal tap.  This was a dangerous operation at the time; but he suspected there was blood leaking into Kennedy’s brain. (ibid, p. 51, p. 72)

    Kennedy had almost always used a driver to get him around.  That night was about a one in a hundred exception.(Lange, p.195)  And this was the first time he had even been on the Chappaquiddick Island.(Lange, p. 191)  In fact, he had been driven to the cottage where the Robert Kennedy memorial cookout was taking place.(Lange, p. 201)  In his original statement given to the police it is revealed just how unfamiliar he was with Mary Jo. (p. 100) He could not spell her name correctly. (Callahan notes Mary Jo was not wearing panties;  she should have noted that she was wearing slacks. Lange, p. 42).

    Callahan also tries to imply that Kennedy was drunk and speeding at the time. She says he had four coke and rums.  He had two all evening. (Lange, p. 138, p. 205) As for speeding he was driving around 20 miles per hour upon entry to the main road and slowed down to about 7-8 MPH as he took the right turn onto Dyke Bridge, which was the wrong turn and on a bridge with no lights and no  guard rails. (Lange, p. 201)

    Kennedy made numerous efforts to save Mary Jo.  But the current was so powerful he was unsuccessful. (Lange, p. 87, p. 208-10)  The same thing happened when he enlisted Gargan and Paul Markham to help.

    The third book that Callahan uses is a biography of Ted Kennedy’s first wife Joan.  The book was written by Joan’s administrative assistant for three years, Marcia Chellis.  What I thought was interesting in this book is that although Callahan criticizes Ted for being a cheater, its pretty clear from Chellis’ descriptions that Joan cheated on Ted also. (Living with the Kennedys, p. 47).  What is also interesting is that Ted supplied Joan with a lot of help in the house, maid, cook etc.  And somehow, that is supposed to be a bad thing? (Ibid, p. 38)

    Finally, that book closes with Joan’s recovery from alcoholism and her return to normality after the finalization of her divorce from Ted Kennedy.  The implication being that it was all Ted’s fault and Joan would now go on to fulfill her potential both personally and professionally.

    Chellis spoke too soon. That is not what happened. In 1988 her car crashed into a fence on Cape Cod. This earned a 45 day license suspension, with an order to go to meetings about her alcoholism. Three years later, she was arrested for drinking vodka straight out of a bottle while weaving her car along an expressway. She was later sent for rehabs at McLean Hospital and also at St Luke’s in New York.  The latter specializes in celebrity treatments. She said she finally felt free around this point. (Boston.com, “The Fall of Joan”, 5/15/2006)

    Then in 2006 she was found with blood on her face trying to get up after a fall on a Beacon Street sidewalk. Someone called for an ambulance.  She sustained a concussion and a broken shoulder. Her blood alcohol was above the legal limit. This episode eventually led to her three children setting up the equivalent of a conservatorship over her affairs and assets.  For one thing, she was hiding her addictions from her own caretaker. (ibid)

    Just recall, 2006 was well over 20  years after her divorce from  Ted Kennedy.

    III

    Maureen Callahan’s book is so imbalanced, so agenda driven, that even if you are a Kennedy relative who is  innocent, you are guilty.  A good example of this is the William Kennedy Smith/Patricia Bowman incident from 1991 . Callahan touches on this case in passing three times. (p. 180, pp. 268-69, pp. 313-14)  And she clearly sides with the accuser Bowman without describing any of the evidence that caused the jury to acquit Smith. In March of 1991, the two met at a bar in Palm Beach, Florida and  according to Smith, Bowman offered to drive him home. Smith was the nephew of Senator Ted Kennedy, the son of Jean Kennedy Smith who was appointed ambassador to Ireland in 1993. What happened after they arrived at home was a subject of dispute. It was finally decided in court over a broadcast by the Courtroom Television Network, their first jury trial. Bowman’s claim was that Smith sexually assaulted her; Smith insisted that it was consensual sex.  Smith said this happened on the beach. Bowman said it happened near the pool closer to the house; there he tackled and assaulted her. Smith called her story an outrageous lie. (Miami Herald, 5/12/91)

    At first it was believed that there would be no trial since Bowman’s case largely  consisted of her word against Smith’s. But prosecutor Moira Lasch decided  to file charges. This did not occur until May 12, almost six weeks later. (ibid) Smith told his cousin Patrick Kennedy that he felt he was being set up.  And the fact that the woman took an urn and framed photograph out of the house suggested to Patrick that such might have been the case. (Miami Herald, 5/15/91)

    The problem with Lasch’s case was simple.  Defense attorney Roy Black took apart Bowman’s key corroborating witness. Anne Mercer met  Bowman at the Kennedy estate that following morning. Mercer’s story was shown to be a bit inconsistent. For example, in prior statements Mercer said that the victim told her she had been assaulted twice, on the beach and inside the estate. She also said that Ted Kennedy had been watching the first time. (ibid) It came out on Black’s cross examination that she had sold her story to A Current Affair for 40,000 dollars and, with that money, she had taken a trip to Mexico with her live in in boyfriend. This was after she was in receipt of a subpoena for the trial, and after the jury had been selected. Some observers felt this was a turning point in the proceedings. Another fascinating factor Black brought out was this: the accuser was able to find her way to Mercer’s home afterwards–even though this was the first time Mercer said she had ever been there. Black’s cross-examination of Mercer was so effective that legal commentators ended up calling her “his witness”.

    Forensically, Black called  Charles M. Sieger, an architect who examined the house for acoustic properties. He concluded that noises would travel far inside the confines of the home. But the accuser previously said that she screamed that night about 15-20 feet from the property. But none of the dozen people inside heard her. Sieger said, on the contrary, he heard a conversation from the second floor coming from the beach area.(Miami Herald, December 8, 1991) Forensic scientist Henry Lee testified that he could find no grass, or  mud stains or major damage on the accuser’s clothes, which he expected to be there from a struggle on the lawn. He even used a microscope. (Chicago Tribune, 12/8/91).

    In fact, and a point which Black accentuated,  when Mercer arrived to pick her up, the accuser was in the house at the top of a stairs.  She had not run away, or locked herself in her car.

    But here was the real problem with Lasch’s case.  Bowman had removed both her shoes and pantyhose before she entered the house. Black effectively used this fact during his cross examination of both Mercer and Bowman: the suggestion being that she intended to have relations with Smith from the start. We will never know if, as Smith told his cousin Patrick Kennedy, he was being set up. But Black managed to put the possibility out there.

     In a bit over an hour, the jury acquitted Smith.  Needless to say none of this is mentioned by Callahan.

    IV

    The problem with the Smith acquittal can be explained in two words: Dominick Dunne. Dunne was writing  for Vanity Fair and editor Tina Brown at that time. She allowed him to write a story in the March 1992 edition of that magazine saying that Smith was acquitted because of the Kennedys’ “pageant of piety in Palm Beach”.  It was this belief that formed part of the motive for his years long crusade to convict Michael Skakel in the cold case of Martha Moxley’s 1975 murder in Greenwich, Connecticut. Skakel was a nephew to Ethel Kennedy, the widow of murdered Senator Robert Kennedy. Callahan spends about 17 pages on the Moxley case.  But she does not even begin to describe the true roles of Dunne and LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman. (Callahan, pp. 180-196). To anyone familiar with that massive and prolonged media event, this is startling.  Because without those two men, in all probability, there would have been no trial of Michael Skakel

    Callahan suggests that somehow the leaders of Greenwich had little interest in the wake of 15 year old Martha Moxley’s bloody murder during Hell Night in 1975. She also implies that one of the elite was involved.(Callahan, p. 186)   There is an evidentiary problem with that implication.  There was no hard evidence in the case to convict anyone: no matching blood samples, no DNA, no fingerprints, no eyewitnesses, no shoeprints. Therefore, prosecutor Donald Browne did not file charges. But he did commission inquiries.  The two main suspects were Ken Littleton–the Skakel family tutor—and Michael’s older brother, Tom Skakel.  Tom was allegedly having some kind of an affair with Martha and was the last known person to see her alive. But—and it’s a big but– on Hell Night, Halloween Eve, there was and is a large influx of youngsters on the streets and in alleys who party, imbibe in liquor, and smoke dope. (Robert Kennedy Jr, Framed, p. 19).  

    Dunne would have none of this. How bad was Dunne in both cases, i.e. the Smith and Moxley cases?  During the former case, he dropped a rumor that William Kennedy Smith had been in Greenwich the night Moxley was killed, and that Browne wanted to do forensic tests on him. This was false, but it indicates the jihad that Dunne had against the Kennedys. (Vanity Fair, October, 2000)

    Another point that Callahan leaves out: in 1993 Dunne wrote a novel, A Season in Purgatory, based on the Moxley case.  It featured a cover up by the police caused by a wealthy family’s power. Incredibly, the killer is a camouflaged John Kennedy Jr.  Between the rubbish about Smith and this incendiary novel, could Dunne make his intention any more clear?  Also ignored by Callahan: the novel was then made into a mini-series in 1996, and this gave Dunne an even larger platform on the Moxley case.

    In addition to downplaying Dunne’s rabid crusade and erasing Fuhrman, Callahan does not mention Tom Sheridan.  Yet it was through Sheridan that Michael now became a suspect.  It was attorney Sheridan who talked Michael’s father Rushton into doing “purposely prejudicial” inquiries into Tommy, Michael and Littleton on the Moxley case. Sheridan edited those files to spin them against Michael. (Kennedy, pp. 145-46) It was Sheridan who requested that, after a DUI and accident, that his father place Michael in a kind of bootcamp reform school called Elan. Michael was regularly beaten up there, and he tried to escape more than once. He ended up suffering from PTSD because of this house of horrors. Not noted by Callahan: That school was eventually closed down, partly due to the efforts of former students. (Ibid, p. 138)

    Dunne- with help from the late rightwing literary agent Lucianna Goldberg–was rehabbing Fuhrman after his calamity in the O. J. Simpson trial.  The pair convinced the former detective to write a book on the Moxley case. Fuhrman visited this school and he found some of the people who said they knew Skakel. No surprise, they said he confessed to the Moxley killing.  Two of them testified at Skakel’s trial. Michael’s defense was so bereft that the school  administrators were not summoned. One of them, Mr. Ricci, called this testimony preposterous. He never heard about it and he should have. He then would have called in the attorneys. (p. 193) One of the trial witnesses named a corroborator.  When this person was finally found, he said it was all invented.  He then called the two trial witnesses liars. (ibid, pp. 199-200) Callahan uses these witnesses. (Callahan, p. 192)

    The inquiries paid for by Rushton eventually got out to at least three people.  This included Dunne, and he gave them to Fuhrman to write his book, Murder in Greenwich. Dunne also wrote a long article based on them for the October 2000 issue of  Vanity Fair. If you are counting, that is a novel, a mini-series, a non-fiction book, a major magazine article and –we should not leave it out– there was also a broadcast film made out of Fuhrman’s book. Plus both Dunne and Fuhrman made TV appearances. Finally, Dunne gave the files to the investigator on the case, Frank Garr.

    Under this unremitting pressure from outside forces the local authorities succumbed. (Hartford Courant, November 14, 2002, article by Roger Catilin) They indicted Michael using a one man grand jury, they rewrote the statute of limitations, and they tried him as an adult, even though he was a juvenile when the crime occurred.  To top it all off, Michael had a defense attorney, Mickey Sherman, who was somewhat less than zealous, yet he charged Rushton 200,000 dollars for media appearances. (Kennedy, p. 222) Surprisingly, although charging a 2.5 million overall fee, Sherman did not hire a jury selection expert. With this kind of defense, with Dunne and Fuhrman infesting the new DA’s office, and the media arrayed against him, in 2002 Michael was railroaded to conviction.

    In an appeal for a new trial, Skakel was paroled in 2013. His conviction was overturned in 2018 on the grounds that Sherman did not provide an adequate defense. In the appeals process an alibi witness was found for Michael who proved he was not at the scene of the crime. Callahan spends one sentence on this witness. (Callahan, p. 195) The DA could have retried the case. They declined.  Again, Callahan left that out.

    She also does not mention the following: Michael Skakel has filed a lawsuit against both the town of Greenwich and lead investigator Frank Garr.  The primary grounds are malicious prosecution and violation of legal rights. Part of that lawsuit states that  Garr threatened witnesses, hid evidence, and was attempting to profit from a book and movie deal. (CNN report of January 4, 2024 by Syllla and Sabrina Souza) Michael’s lawyer termed what happened to his client a “railroad job”. He called Michael an innocent man who never committed the crime.  (News 12 Connecticut, January 3, 2024)

    For Callahan to not fully reveal this side of the story is inexplicable.  Perhaps because if one does, in tandem with the Smith case, it counters her thesis. The indications are the two men were prosecuted because they were Kennedy related.

    In baseball, there is a term called “taking the collar”.  That means a batter goes zero for four in a nine inning game. That is  he got no hits or walks in four trips to the plate.  As the reader can see, from parts 1 and 2, Callahan has gone zero for seven. Which is more like  the equivalent of taking the collar in a double header. Quite a negative achievement.

     In Part 3:  Former lawyer Megyn Kelly cheerleads Callahan’s trashy book.

    Read Part One

    Read Part Three

  • Maureen Callahan Goes over the Edge—Along with Megyn Kelly Pt 1

    Maureen Callahan Goes over the Edge—Along with Megyn Kelly Pt 1

    Many years ago, at the end of 1997 to be exact, I wrote a two part essay for Probe Magazine entitled “The Posthumous Assassination of John F. Kennedy.” This was done in reaction to the publication of Sy Hersh’s horrendous book on Kennedy, entitled the Dark Side of Camelot. That book was so bad, so intellectually problematic that it was almost universally panned; even in the MSM. The most notable instance was by Garry Wills in the New York Review of Books. And Wills was no fan of JFK.

    In that essay, I went through a collection of books that had arisen in what I called the anti-Kennedy category; thus tracing the origins of Hersh’s debacle. This included works by authors like, among others, John Davis, Thomas Reeves, and the writing duo of Peter Collier and David Horowitz. I stated that by the time of the Reeves book, A Question of Character, in 1991, the field had become voluminous enough that an author could just rely on the accumulated secondary sources to do a compendium styled book. Which is what Reeves did. Even to the point of including the utterly fatuous Kitty Kelley article in People magazine in 1988. In that piece, bylined by Kelley, Judith Exner said that she had been a messenger between the White House and Chicago Don Sam Giancana in the plots to kill Castro. For Hersh she said that Bobby Kennedy was cognizant of this and commented on it to her. (Hersh, pp. 307-08). Somehow Hersh missed the fact that on a 1992 program with Larry King, the fraudulent Exner said she never even talked to Bobby Kennedy, at the most she ran into him at a rally in LA. In other words, Exner uttered so many fabrications she could not keep track of them. This is just an inkling of the quicksand one can fall into by implicitly trusting the rabid anti-Kennedy literature.

    II

    Maureen Callahan had no inkling and no trepidations about what had happened to Hersh. After all, as she later reveals, her mother urged her on. Also perhaps because she worked for Rupert Murdoch at the New York Post for two decades. In fact, Callahan just leaped into the morass—headfirst. She has now pretty much done what Reeves did. And, unembarrassed, she includes both Reeves and Hersh in her bibliography. But, her volume more accurately resembles the Collier/Horowitz book, The Kennedys: An American Drama. Why? Because that book did not just focus on John Kennedy. It covered, in large part, the entire Kennedy clan. As I pointed out in my essay, Collier and Horowitz were migrating from the left—they had both worked at Ramparts in upper level positions—to the right. And their Kennedy book was so bad—in every way—that it seemed to provide their golden key to the conservative kingdom. And from all appearances, it did. In other words, theirs was really a political book. Which is why the two former journalists and scholars decided to use Kelley as a source. As we shall see, one can conclude the same for Callahan, who also uses Kelley.

    The title of Callahan’s book is Ask Not. And on the cover there is a set of three eye shots, easily discernible as Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette. I think this is supposed to do two things. First to suggest a “deer in the headlights” pose and second, of course, to mock Kennedy’s famous inaugural address. Since Bessette never knew JFK, and as we shall see, there is very little evidence for any kind of an affair between Monroe and JFK, that heavily suggestive cover and title is pretty much bombast. Let us take the three cases up in order.

    I would have thought that any serious author today would have known better than to jump into the Monroe mess using writers like Tony Summers and Donald Wolfe. Yet Callahan sources them, uses them and does not issue the unsuspecting reader any qualifications. Today that alone should put her book on the reject list. Why? Because both men not just trusted the proven liar Robert Slatzer but, according to Monroe scholar Don McGovern, both referenced Slatzer literally scores of times in their books. (McGovern, Murder Orthodoxies, p. 76) Why is that important in understanding Callahan?

    Because in order to sell a book Slatzer made up a story about being married to Monroe in Mexico. That story is so full of holes that it is hard to keep a straight face while reciting it. But McGovern spends 18 pages taking it apart piece by piece. (McGovern, pp. 48-66). Other writers, like April VeVea, have also shown that Monroe could not have been in Mexico at that time since it is proven through photographic and handwriting evidence that she was in Los Angeles. (McGovern, p. 48, p. 100) This fake marriage is just one of several inventions by Slatzer. Which includes bribing someone to lie for him about his manufactured wedding, namely boxer/actor Noble Kid Chissell. Slatzer then welshed on the bribe. Summers used Chissell to validate Slatzer. (McGovern, pp. 98-99)

    In addition, those books also utilized other dubious witnesses like the late wiretapper Bernie Spindel, detective Fred Otash, policeman Gary Wean, and trick golfer Jeanne Carmen. Like Spindel, Callahan says that Monroe’s house was bugged. (Callahan, p. 209; all references to E book version) This issue has been negated twice. The first time was by the 1982 Los Angeles DA Ron Carroll inquiry. (McGovern, p.445) The second source was author Gary Vitacco Robles who got access to the records from the phone company and devoted a whole chapter to this mythology, concluding there was no evidence of such tapping. (Icon, Chapter 24)

    Callahan uses the oft repeated cliché that Monroe’s phone records were somehow concealed. (Callahan, p. 208, p. 319, p. 353) Again, Vitacco Robles shows this was not true. The original LAPD inquiry had the Monroe records. And the Carroll inquiry in 1982 went even further by trying to find every phone Monroe could have possibly used in the last months of her life. (Icon, Chapter 24) All her calls to Bobby Kennedy went through the main switchboard at the Justice Department and were brief. As Gary points out, she was very likely seeking help for her termination by the studio at that time over her last film, Something’s Got to Give. RFK knew the chairman of the Board of Directors at Fox. There are documents and credible testimony from Monroe’s publicist, Rupert Allan, that indicate this point. (Icon, Pt 2 pp. 535-36)

    As one would suspect by now, Callahan also uses two other pernicious myths in her writing on Monroe and the Kennedys. The first is the idea of some kind of diary that went missing after her death.(Callahan, p. 320) Like the discredited wiretapping, this has also been exposed as a Robert Slatzer hoax. (McGovern, p. 558) Monroe did have an address book that was on a table next to her bed when she died. But it was Slatzer who invented the diary myth for his first book, The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe. There he has Monroe reading to him from it. Slatzer actually wrote that RFK was running the Bay of Pigs operation for his brother. Anyone can investigate—through authors like Peter Kornbluh– and find out that Bobby Kennedy had nothing to do with the execution of that operation. It was a CIA project from first to last, and the two men running it were Director of Plans Dick Bissell and Deputy Director Charles Cabell. As Don McGovern notes, and was proven later, what Monroe kept was not a diary but more like a set of notebooks that was found years after her death. It was published as a book called Fragments. And it does not at all resemble what Slatzer and others, like Lionel Grandison, describe. (Grandison is too ridiculous to even note, but for the curious reader see McGovern, p. 359, p. 560)

    As Don McGovern notes, President Kennedy and Monroe met, at the most four times.(McGovern, Murder Orthodoxies, pp 176-183) In only one instance is there any evidence of a dalliance, and Gary VItacco Robles has even brought that into question. Need I add that Callahan writes that Monroe had an abortion about a month before she died. (p. 319) Unbelievably, she even suggests it was Bobby Kennedy’s child. (Which, as we shall see, is impossible.) This is more mythology. Monroe pathologist Thomas Noguchi found no evidence of any recent abortion. And her gynecologist Leon Krohn said she never had one. (McGovern, pp. 523-24)

    One of the tawdriest aspects of this tawdry book is its use of Jeanne Carmen. And the use of her pretty much gives Callahan’s Machiavellian game away. Today, no rational, objective commentator can believe the deceased Carmen. She has been taken apart piece by piece by so many writers—April VeVea, Don McGovern, Gary VItacco Robles—that anyone who uses her today renders themselves the gravity of a SNL sketch. But this is how hellbent Callahan is to involve both Robert Kennedy and Peter Lawford in the death of Monroe, or to at least for them to be at her home on the day she died, manhandling her. (Callahan, pp. 209)

    Which is all provably false. Bobby Kennedy, a few members of his family, and several other people were all about 350 miles north, in the San Francisco area on the day Monroe died. This is proven by a series of pictures. The ten photographs cover the entire day. (Susan Bernard, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures, pp. 184-88). Those pictures, plus the matching testimony, are the kinds of evidence one can submit in court. Thus exposing Carmen as a liar. And blowing up Callahan’s credibility in the process.

    As per Lawford: again, the evidence is probative that he was not at Monroe’s home the day she died. He was trying to get her out of her house and to a dinner party at his Santa Monica home. The guests were talent manager George Durgom, and TV producer Joe Naar and his wife Dolores. She declined. (Vitacco Robles, Icon, Pt. 1, p. 394) But Lawford was worried because of her speech pattern, plus he was aware of her serious drug problem. Lawford called back but could not get through. He phoned his agent Milton Ebbins and told him to call Monroe’s lawyer Milton Rudin. This got through to Eunice Murray, Marilyn’s housekeeper who—not knowing about her slurred speech to Lawford—said Monroe was alright. (Ibid p. 398, p. 403) Lawford still wanted to go over and get her. But Ebbins told him not to, since Murray would say the same thing. Ebbins later revealed he had a secret agenda: he knew about Monroe’s drug problem and how bad it would look if the president’s brother in law, his client, was at her home when the paramedics arrived. Ebbins told Tony Summers that Lawford never mentioned Bobby Kennedy that evening or even after he told him she was dead. (ibid, p. 413)

    Randy Taraborrelli, a biographer of Marilyn Monroe, has written that the evidence indicates that the relationship between RFK and Monroe was platonic. In his work he found only three instances where they even met in person. And each time was in public. (McGovern, p. 237). Predictably, Callahan uses a very dubious witness, the late Jeanne Martin—Dean Martin’s former wife– to dispute this. Without saying what a wild outlier she is. None of the witnesses at the Lawford dinner parties corroborate her and its not even proven she was there when RFK was. And at one of those dinners, Bobby brought his wife. (McGovern, p. 181)

    Finally, as both San Francisco pathologist Boyd Stephens and the late Pittsburgh forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht agree, Marilyn Monroe was not murdered. The drugs she took were ingested, not injected. (Vitacco Robles, Icon Pt.2, pp 351-61; McGovern, pp. 494-95). Again, this blows Callahan’s ersatz witness Jeanne Carmen off the stand and into the Pacific Ocean. Which is where she belongs. (Carmen once said that Johnny Roselli killed Sam Giancana over Marilyn; 13 years later while Johnny was in retirement in Florida?)

    I could go on since I have rarely seen so much junk on Monroe piled into a relatively compact space. But I think the above is enough to show that, as far as the portentous shot of Marilyn’s eyes on the cover, Callahan has zero to back it up. In fact I would call it less than zero, since what she fails to reveal demolishes her own sources and statements.

    III

    The second set of eyes belongs to Jackie Kennedy, and this really puzzled me. Why? Because to anyone who reads any reputable biography of the woman, marrying John Kennedy was probably the best thing that ever happened to Jacqueline Bouvier. Before she married Kennedy she was working for $42.50 per week–about 650 dollars today–at a newspaper called the Washington Times Herald. She was doing man on the street interviews as a photojournalist. Questions being things like “Is your marriage a 50-50 partnership?” and “Would you like to crash high society?” (Donald Spoto, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onasis, p. 81). That newspaper was purchased in 1954 by the Washington Post and was then discontinued.

    After her husband was killed in 1963, Jackie had a trust fund that, in today’s dollars, was worth about two million per year. She then borrowed money from Robert Kennedy to buy a home in Georgetown. She then leveraged that into a New York City, 14 room townhouse on Fifth Avenue, and according to Bobby, she did not pay him back. (Randy Taraborrelli, Jackie: Public, Private Secret, p. 196).

    In 2006 that townhouse sold for 30 million.

    She deserved it all. Why? Because Jackie Kennedy revolutionized the office of First Lady. She took it to a point that, in my view, went even beyond Eleanor Roosevelt. As her stepbrother said about her, “Being the First Lady wasn’t just her job. It was who she was.” (Taraborrelli, p. 178) The woman spoke five languages. So when President Kennedy would visit Italy, France or South America, she would be voicing his message in those foreign tongues. In her own right, she was well read and intelligent. So she helped Senator Kennedy in the making of what I still think is his greatest speech: his 1957 Algeria address on Third World nationalism, which put him on the map for the 1960 election. (Spoto, p. 112) She, along with David Ormsby Gore of England, convinced Senator Kennedy that “tactical nuclear war was an illusion and that disarmament was the only sane road to lasting peace.” This was another policy that Kennedy then pursued in the White House. (ibid) After her husband’s death, Jackie took the notes of his last meeting, where he mentioned poverty six times, to Bobby Kennedy. RFK had them framed and put on his wall. (Edward R. Schmitt, President of the Other America, p.92, p. 96)

    The First Lady was well aware of the influence that Edmund Gullion, ambassador to Congo, had on her husband. It was Gullion who JFK tasked with stopping the secession of the breakaway Katanga state and keeping Congo one nation against the forces of European imperialism. (Monika Wiesak, America’s Last President, p. 40) She also understood what Kennedy was trying to do with his Alliance for Progress in Latin America. When the newspapers pictured her visit to an orphanage in Venezuela and wrote how she allowed the children to kiss her when she departed, both Kennedys despised the reporting. Since it indicated what an inferiority complex American policy had bestowed on the area. (ibid, pp. 63-64) When she visited Cambodia in 1967, Prince Sihanouk had written a speech to greet her which, in its original form, said the Vietnam War would not have happened if her husband had lived.

    And we know what happened when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had dinner with her in New York. He notes how Jackie had become depressed and critical over the fact that Lyndon Johnson had altered Kennedy’s Indochina policy. In fact, she visited wounded Vietnam vets in hospitals. (Spoto p. 252) When discussing a poem by Gabriela Mistral–which reminded Jackie of her husband–she grew very tense and could barely speak. She suddenly exploded in rage. She then began to pound him across the chest “demanding that I do something to stop the slaughter.” (McNamara, In Retrospect, pp. 257-58). All of this, and more, indicates that the First Lady knew a lot about what her husband’s policies were, and how they were changed later.

    If any reader can find any of the above in Callahan’s book, please let me know.

    So what does Callahan give us instead? Well, what does one expect from a writer who relies on the likes of Sy Hersh and Jeanne Carmen? She uses the late David Heymann and Peter Evans. After the multiple exposes that have been done on the former this is simply fruity. As Donna Morel and David Cay Johnston have shown, Heymann was a pathological liar. He not only made up quotes, he made up people. And this was proven about one of the Heymann books she uses as a source. But further, in order to libel Bobby Kennedy, Heymann even made up police departments. (Click here).

    In Bobby and Jackie, a book Callahan sources in her bibliography, Morel discovered that Heymann likely made up Secret Service reports. (ibid) Lisa Pease did a coruscating review of that same book, in which the author claimed to have been nominated for a Pulitzer three times. He was never once nominated. He also claimed to have had a ten year long relationship with John Kennedy Jr. As Pease shows, this is another falsehood. Lisa also shows that, as Heymann was apt to do, he fabricated witness testimony after the witness was dead. Heymann had Mary Harrington, a neighbor, watch from above as Bobby had his hand on Jackie’s breast at the Kennedy Palm Beach estate. As a local real estate agent noted this was not possible as the entire estate was walled. (Click here).

    I won’t even go into the other book Callahan uses on Jackie. Suffice it to say that Lisa thinks that Nemesis may be a black book, inspired by Robert Maheu. (Click here).

    She even uses the Kitty Kelley story that somehow JFK’s affairs drove her to seek shock treatments in a sanitarium. (Callahan, p. 144) Which is ludicrous. As both Spoto and Taraborrelli note, Jackie did not seek any such counseling until after the assassination. And that was due to the fact that she was clearly suffering from PTSD. She also sent her daughter Caroline for counseling. (Spoto, p. 217, Taraborrelli, pp. 384-85)

    But Kitty Kelley is not the worst concerning Callahan and Jackie Kennedy. The author is intent on somehow demeaning Jackie’s admirable behavior after the assassination, both at Parkland Hospital and the return to Washington. So she has her performing fellatio on his corpse at Parkland. (p. 42) I actually wrote “WTF” in my notebook when I saw this. I could not find any reference to it in her notes section, which is very loose and would not pass muster in any history department. Not only is this not in either Spoto or Taraborrelli, but its not in the hour by hour chronicles of the assassination by either William Manchester or Jim Bishop. The Bishop book is actually a minute by minute account of the day of the murder, and he spends several pages on this Parkland episode in his chapter entitled “The Afternoon Hours”. And in his introduction, called “For the Record”, one can see that he is no big fan of either President Kennedy or his wife. In fact, Jackie did not want him to write the book.

    When I saw this, I dialed back to Callahan’s introductory notes. There she said that her subjectivity is no less or more than that of any other historian. (p. xi) She then said that she had taken some creative license in the book.(p. xv) Can the woman be real? As we shall see, the last thing anyone should characterize Callahan is as historian. Not with this kind of referencing. And historians do not use creative license.

    In sum, and in the real world, Jackie Kennedy became the most famous First Lady in history, a worldwide political symbol, a fashion icon, and ultimately a millionairess due to her wedding to John Kennedy.

    Second dud for Callahan

    IV

    In 1968, after Bobby Kennedy’s murder, which frightened and sickened her, Jackie agreed to marry Aristotle Onassis. He was a Greek shipping magnate who had his own island off the coast of Greece with a security detail. (Spoto, p. 236). But the problem was she wanted her children raised in New York. So she ended up splitting time between the two places.

    John Jr. understood his mother’s PTSD so he covered up pictures of her in Dallas before she could see them. (Taraborrelli, p. 401). He attended Brown University for his undergraduate degree and while there organized seminars on South African apartheid, a situation which horrified him. (Elaine Landau, John F. Kennedy Jr, p. 78). He then worked a year at the Office of Business Development in New York, becoming the deputy director of the 42nd Street Development Corporation in 1986. He was interacting with developers and city agencies. (Michael Gross, New York, 3/20/89) He did this for $20,000 a year. After this, he headed up a nonprofit group called Reaching Up which, among other things, provided education and other opportunities for workers who aided disabled persons. (Click here.) This last clearly reflects the things his father, his Aunt Eunice and his Uncle Robert were attempting to do. Which is probably why Callahan brushes it aside.

    He attended NYU Law school and passed the BAR on his third try. He was in the Manhattan DA’s office for four years. And according to those he worked with, he took cases no one else wanted, and then won them in court. (Michael Gross, in the A and E Biography, John F Kennedy Jr: The Death of an American Prince; Taraborrelli, p. 421). Contrary to what Callahan implies, his mother was not all that excited about JFK Jr starting George, his political/cultural magazine. She thought he should continue in his law career in which she saw him carving an estimable niche. (Taraborrelli, p. 421)

    In no uncertain terms Callahan tries to demean John’s work at George. Really? At its inception, in 1995, George was a startling success, achieving about a 500,000 circulation. What makes that even more remarkable is that this was when the online revolution in publishing was taking place. Yet George was a print magazine. For a point of comparison, David Talbot started Salon online that same year. It peaked at about 100,000 subscribers, 1/5 the circulation.

    So in light of all the above, for her to say that John Kennedy Jr was a middle aged man with no accomplishments, this says much more about Callahan and her agenda than it does Kennedy Jr. But that’s not all. Callahan is so monomaniacal, so freight train in her intent, she even trashes John’s wedding to Carolyn Bessette on Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia. Callahan throws in a line criticizing Carolyn’s wedding gown and adds that the metaphoric picture of John kissing her gloved hand was a lie. (Callahan, p. 273, p. 275)

    Again, there are pictures and films of this wedding, and in her book Once Upon A Time, Elizabeth Beller spends ten pages describing what a joyous event this was and how exuberant everyone felt afterwards. (pp. 139-148) In honor of JFK’s and RFK’s work on civil rights it took place at the First African Baptist Church. The guest list was small and the couple tricked the media by saying they were going to Ireland. They did not want the paparazzi there, and they succeeded. In fact, there was only one phone at the inn they rented. People were dancing, singing and reciting poetry.

    But that is not the worst part. Apparently, Callahan wants to attack John Jr from beyond the grave. She writes that somehow Carolyn was going to be buried separately from John. This allows her to close a chapter with this: “In death, as in life, they never considered Carolyn Bessette a real Kennedy.” (p. 284 )Stunned, I wrote, “Look this up!’ Any junior high school student can google “ burial of John\ Kennedy Jr.” You will see that all three people who died in the plane crash of July 1999, that is John, his wife and his wife’s sister Lauren, were buried at sea.(Beller, p. 280). There was a very nice memorial service on July 23rd, no cameras allowed, and 315 people were invited. Then there was another the next day for all three in Greenwich. (Beller, p. 284) Can she really not have known about all of this? I find that very hard to believe.

    There was an incredible outpouring of grief exhibited by the enormous number of mourners who assembled outside the townhouse the couple lived in, with the flowers and gifts they brought to the curb. Maybe there was a subconscious reason for this remarkable display. As some writers have noted, and as revealed in JFK Jr. The Final Year, John was going to run for governor in 2002. But even further, as researcher Don Jeffries has written, John Jr, was an avid reader of books about his father’s murder. (Hidden History, Chapter 7)

    In fact, according to a high school girlfriend, Meg Azzoni, “His heartfelt quest was to expose and bring to trial those who killed his father and who covered it up.” Jeffries got corroboration for this from a second source who wished to remain anonymous. The message was that John “was keenly interested in and knowledgeable about his father’s assassination, and often talked about it privately.” According to Steven Gillon, John told him that Bobby knew everything. (People Weekly, 7/3/19, article by Liz McNeil)

    If so this may shed light on an enigma about the night of the crash. Although the story was that the weather was hazy, according to Jeffries, the last message that John conveyed about the conditions was that all was well. And the man assigned to write the FAA report, Edward Meyer, strongly disagreed with the weather conditions being depicted as hazy. (See Jeffries Substack of 7/18/24)

    Those people gathered outside the townhouse understood something that Callahan’s country mile agenda cannot bring herself to address. This tragedy deprived them of their hope for another JFK and Jackie.

    Read Part Two

    Read Part Three